A customer service session typically involves a customer interacting with a customer service representative over a teleconference. Oftentimes, a company on behalf of which the session is being conducted will monitor the interaction between the customer service representative and the customer for external as well as internal purposes. For example, an external purpose relates to providing documentation of the interaction in the case that the customer or customer service representative later disputes any agreements or promises made during the session. Such recordation provides an invaluable tool, especially when the interaction involves the sale of a good or service. An example of an internal purpose relates to providing documentation of the interaction for use in later performing a quality assurance assessment of the session or otherwise evaluating the efficiency and demeanor of the customer service representative.
Originally, customer service sessions were monitored using audio recorders positioned in close relation to the customer service representative's office space. As a customer call was connected to the customer service representative's phone, the customer service representative would be responsible for initiating a recording session and maintaining that recording session until completion of the call. Modern systems, however, are much more advanced and shift the responsibility of initiating recording sessions from the customer service representative to a computer.
FIG. 1, for example, illustrates a conventional computer-based monitoring system 100 for use in documenting interaction between a customer service representative and a customer. Customer service sessions are typically initiated by a customer calling a customer service representative using a phone 102. Once dialed, the call is connected to a customer service representative's phone 106 by way of the Public-Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) 104.
As is common with large companies, a number of customer service representatives are employed to take customer service calls, however, at any given time, very few or none might be available. Therefore, an automatic control distribution (ACD) module 108 may be used to accept customer service calls from the PSTN 104 and select the most appropriate customer service representative for interaction with the calling customer. Oftentimes, the most appropriate customer service representative will be selected from an available customer service representative or, if all customer service representatives are currently busy with other customers, the customer service representative having the shortest queue (assuming that a number of other calling customers are on hold). The automatic control distribution module 108 serves as a gateway into the company's internal network from the PSTN 104 and is thus assigned a specific telephone number for accepting calls on behalf of the company's customer service department.
The monitoring system 100 includes an audio recording component 112, a scheduling component 114, a video capture device 116 for each customer service representative, two databases 118 and 120 and a server computer 122. A first 118 of the two databases stores video data captured from the video capture devices 116 while the other database 120 stores audio data captured by the audio recording component 112, as shown using data communication lines 126 and 130, respectively. Each video capture device 116 is positioned relative to a customer service representative in order to record the movements and actions of the customer service representatives during service sessions. The audio recording component 112 is communicatively connected to the ACD module 108 by way of a first data communication link 124, such as a T1 transmission line. The scheduling component 114 is connected communicatively connected to the ACD module 108 by way of a second data communication link 126, which is referred to as a CTI link.
In response to receiving a call on the PSTN 104, the ACD module 108 selects the appropriate customer service representative based on any number of considerations (as described above) and transmits a signal over the CTI link 126 to the scheduling module 114 that identifies the selected customer service representative. The scheduling module 114 determines whether the selected customer service representative is due for monitoring and, if so, instructs the audio recording component 112 and the video capture device 116 associated with the selected service representative to record the service session between the customer and the selected customer service representative. Furthermore, the scheduling component 114 instructs the ACD module 108 via the CTI line 126 that the current session has been selected for recording and, in response to such instruction, the ACD module 108 provides an audio feed of the entire conversation to the audio recording component 112 over the T1 line 124. Basically, the audio recording component 112 administers a high impedance tap of the T1 line 124 and records the audio interaction of the current session while the video capture device 116 records the movements and actions of the selected customer service representative during the session.
Audio data recorded by the audio recording component 112 is saved to the audio database 120 and video data recorded by the video capture device 116 is saved to the video database 118. More specifically, for each recorded service session, the audio database 120 stores an audio file documenting the vocal interaction between the customer and selected customer service representative. Likewise, the video database 118 stores a video file for each recorded service session that documents the actions and movements of the selected customer service representative.
The server computer 122, which is communicatively connected to both the audio and video databases 118 and 120 via the playback server 121, is used by supervisors to monitor recorded service sessions. To provide functionality for monitoring a specific service session, the server computer 122 first accesses the playback server 121 and requests playback of the service session. The playback server 121 retrieves the corresponding audio file from the audio database 120 and the corresponding video file from the corresponding video database 118 and thereafter streams the to the server computer 122 concurrently with one another such that the supervisor is provided with both video and audio documentation of the specified service session at the same time.
While computer-based monitoring certainly has advantages over the prior manual approach, there is room for much improvement. For example, the intended simultaneous playback of audio and video files on the server computer 122 is often out of synch. With that said, the video playback often lags behind the audio playback or, vice-versa. Furthermore, current monitoring systems, such as the system 100 shown in FIG. 1, are off-the-shelf type systems that either include unnecessary features or, alternatively, lack required features. While unnecessary features tend to slow down certain processing functions thereby bogging down the system altogether, systems that lack features are typically incompatible with certain implementations.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.